"While leaving was an option, with how things were, it wouldn't do much good. If those closest to danger always left, that danger would be allowed to advance. Both enemies took everything they could take. We fought to hold the cities closest to danger, and that implicitly protected the rest of them.

I myself would feel safer here if I could use my magic to its full potential. I've needed to adapt it to work here, but it isn't as potent. He finished eating the leg, and poked the sow with his knife again. The Juices ran clear, and he started cutting all the meat off of the bones. When he finished that, he fished a tube of salt out of his pack and generously applied it to the meat, eating a couple pieces of it as it was.

Two-legs are weird, she grunted. Taking what isn't needed makes no sense.

Watching him eat, Songhue shrugged off that puzzle and turned to the next. And your magic works fine. You're just doing it wrong. When you swim, do you move the same way as when you collect the mushrooms? Your balance is fine for both, but you keep that balance differently. Come, show me your magic; I will teach you.

Somewhere along the line, she had apparently grown fond of the creature. Without quite realizing it, Songhue had decided to help him.

"I drew a rune of breaking on the log before swinging my hatchet, and the log broke in one stroke. Some of my magic is rune based, and some of it simply is. Other runes I can draw are ones of that fall under strength, healing, and protection. An herbs potency increases increases many times over when I use it, at least before I came here. It took a lot of power out of me, but I could make plants grow almost immediately before coming here. I also could recognize the medicinal properties of a plant simply by holding it before I came here. Here, I can't tell short of trial and error of even which ones are poisonous.

Here's an example of with and without a rune."

Pierre hit his fist into the dirt, making a dull thud. He then drew the rune of breaking onto the dirt, and hit his fist on the rune. The second time, even though the swing was the same, the dirt flew out in all directions, and made a small crater.

"If that had worked correctly, both of us would be covered in dirt right now from how much flew out creating a crater."

Easy, she declared, it's only rune magic, which helps. Simple enough. Set your meat to dry and we'll get started.

Stretching, she moved away a few feet and made a few scratches in the dirt. After a few moment she paused and thrashed her tail, her ears flicking in annoyance.

It was hard to do with liger claws - the best she could manage would be trying to scratch in the symbols with the side of a claw. Proper drawing wasn't going to happen.

Fine. Maybe a stick. Tail still flicking around in irritation, she grabbed a fallen branch and went back to scratching. And realized she couldn't see what she was doing. Checking her progress didn't prove any more promising; there was no precision, what she had managed was smudged or shaky, and enough lines had bent or crossed in the wrong areas that it no longer resembled the right rune.

Dropping the stick, she swiped the patch of dirt clean in obvious disgust - and found herself shimmering. Within moments a fae stood in the liger's place, seeming to be nearly delicate after the powerful cat.

After a few more minutes spent scratching with the stick again, she stepped back and smiled in satisfaction. There, she said, that's better. Now then, this is a modified rune of destruction.

Stepping back to where she'd started, she picked up a small stone and tossed it onto the rune. In a blink, there was a hole large enough for her liger form to have comfortably slept in and a small mountain of dirt ringing the pit.

Runes, she said, turning back to face him with a nearly-disturbing intensity to her gaze, are simple tools to harness and focus magic. They're conduits. Different magics require different conduits, hence the different runes.

Bending down, she picked up another stone and tossed it at a tree. Now as far as conduits are concerned, when I throw a stone like that it's the air that has to be passed through in order for the rock to hit the tree. But what if I was throwing under water? The same tree, at the same distance, with the same stone would still require an adjustment compared to the methods used with air.

Watching him closely with the piercing gaze of a practiced teacher, she gave a vague motion with her hand and a ghostly image of herself and the tree sprang up, semi-transparent and woven of light. The demonstration moved as she continued. I could try throwing harder in the water - but it would probably fall short all the same. If I had a different tool besides my hand, I might be able to shoot it far enough; say, if I had a sling.

With another gesture the pebble illusion faded out right as it was to strike the tree. With a few steps she picked up the stone and put it back where she'd first gotten it, all without a second thought.

Magic works the same way. The magic here is different than what you're used to; it was different than what I was used to, myself. Took me months to figure out how to befriend it. With the way it works here, you can't use the same tools - the same runes - to channel your magic. You have to match them to what you're attempting to use it with; I'm sure you already drew the parallel from that to the example of air versus water.

With a slight shrug, she crossed her legs and sat down with a flutter of her wings, absently poking at the drying strips of meat and turning them over. Now the hard part is learning to read the magic here. You'll only know how you need to modify your runes once you know the sort of magic you'll be channeling. You'd make a different adjustment for a hard wind than you would for water; how do you fit your runes to suit the magic here?

Passing her hand palm-down over the ground next to her had a patch of wild blossoms springing up, making her tilt her head as she brushed her fingers over a few of the blossoms. Taste the magic here, she advised, you'll feel the difference, once you pay attention; if you haven't already.

Making a fist, the blossoms withered and faded, crumbling into mulch until they couldn't be distinguished from the dirt they'd first sprung from.

She shrugged and turned that piercing gaze back to him, by all appearances seeing every last detail. She was trying to start simply, but the topic of magic could run into many complex depths, leading to discussions that could potentially last for weeks at a time. She'd start with the basics and see what more he may know before progressing.

Regardless of how detailed they got, the hard part would remain the same; melding oneself to suit the magics that soaked this realm. They didn't answer to demands; you had to befriend them.

Pierre listened and watched intently. "The runes I am familiar with may be more of a fragment of the runes necessary to use here. " He scratched his chin to think a minute. "I wonder if the source of magic here is more stable than that which I am accustomed to. That could explain why a cruder rune would work in my world, and the same rune here wouldn't exact the same amount of power."

He started drawing in the dirt the pieces of the master rune he knew, getting lost in thought.

She squatted in front of him, tilting her head thoughtfully at his musings. The magics here could hardly be called stable, she was sure of that - the residue from the last great war that had wiped the fae from this realm, the massive magical storms that raged over much of the world were anything but stable. It was raw magic, entirely unleashed and allowed to alter the land unchecked. It helped create the Serians, these beings who had worked to create a small haven free from the dangerous storms and predators found elsewhere in Rhyandrithae. The whole world seemed to have become a part of that magic; so much so that one had to be counted a friend before being allowed to tap into the power, and even then the power was borrowed - not controlled.

Only those native to this place could honestly link into it, from what she'd seen. Elementals and Rogues, they had no trouble connecting to the magic that permeated and raged over much of this world, calming only in those areas where creatures had joined such efforts; free of the magically enhanced predators only by the protection of their Warriors and Rogues.

No, it certainly couldn't be counted as more stable; but perhaps, it could be counted as more prevalent. It may be that the magic in the place he was from was simply weak - weak enough that a simple conduit could harness and control it, rather than shorting out to the point of being nearly useless. There had to be very little, perhaps hardly any, magic in this place that could be considered of a weaker or less prevalent sort; pieces that were tamed and molded into Sionayra, perhaps other places, perhaps not. She'd thought, more than once, she had felt some other areas similar to this out beyond the raging storms; but they hadn't felt ready for such intrusion as a visit; not yet. Could be there would be other places like this, some day; could be there already were, but none were open to the possibility of welcoming others. Not like how the Serians had done, bonding themselves to strange beings to lend themselves strength - to help make this haven permanent.

With a blink she realized she'd let her mind wander and that, as usual, her thoughts had turned back to her bonded. She could feel them, every single one; all seventeen. Eternal had wandered from their group-play to find some time for herself; and hopefully, find a new friend. She got very lonely. Path had whisked away to be romanced by her mate; she needed the lift. Darroch was finally being unleashed on strangers without anyone around to monitor him; hopefully he wouldn't prove to be too outrageous, but one could hardly tell with him. He was off in the mountain ranges, somewhere. Thorn was north of him, in the woodlands; the thread that bound him to her felt warm and heavy with a strange sort of contentment, one that had her quite curious. Adventuring seemed to favor him; maybe he and BlackIce could see what trouble they might find together. Breeze and Nova were cozied in the middle of the fields, cuddling on a bed of moss and soft leaves; she'd been a bit sick for a while, and now she was growing round at a rather alarming rate. It looked like a new foal may be on the way; she hoped it'd be an easy birth. Path's had been long and hard, she remembered, and Breeze was worried that his tiny mate might have similar trouble. Nova's thread, on the other hand, felt not only confident but impatient; the baby was active today, making her uncomfortable as her insides got rearranged.

The rest milled about aimlessly, taking time to merely enjoy being together before finding ways to entertain themselves. They might start with a game or a song when the time came; nobody was all that certain. For now, they were simply together.

Through these bonds that linked them as a part of her, Songhue found she was always aware of how they were doing. She knew when they were distressed; she knew when they were in love. She couldn't be any more unaware of them than she could be of her own self, or the ties that linked her to her clan and family.

That was the common ground, for her, between what she was and the magic here. It was a small clan she was bound to, but a good one. Her brother, her niece, her own two cubs; an aunt she'd thought had forgotten herself and allowed the ties to drop. Others she wasn't sure about any more; a mother that she thought half-insane, trying to turn dark almost regularly; another aunt that had allowed her own skills to fade until they were passive, at best; and an uncle that had turned from them all, taking a third aunt with him. Most of them slept, moving through the realms with little thought or effort; some others simply allowed the bonds to weaken and fade. But it was bonding she understood, and in the end she was left as Clan High Elder, until someone else came to take over; to build a new home, to help awaken and strengthen old skills, to find others of their kind, to keep the role of Shamaness and pass on the traditions, history, culture and magic of ages passed. It helped that she had long since performed the spell of full awakening, several realms past - she never truly forgot herself or the ways her kind lived. She never thought herself a part of where she settled. And that her skill was to hold the scales of balance; to know mercy and the harshness of survival, to know logic and understand emotion, to accept the dark while bringing light.

She knew why Eternal felt alone sometimes; amid all that, she could still feel the same. Her skill was a minor one; she didn't excel in weaving emotions and energies, as her niece did. She didn't have the ability to crawl into another's being and rearrange and heal their heart and spirit, as her brother could. She couldn't even boast superior hunting prowess, as many hunters who would have provided for them could do; she simply knew how to teach, and knew the balance of warrior and healer. And surrounded by aliens in a strange realm, one of but a few who had awakened to themselves enough to use their talents, she often felt as alone as Eternal did. For a while she'd known peace; but her own mate had yet to be found and an impersonator had gone insane, leaving her lonelier than ever. Had it been her true mate, the breaking of that tie could destroy her; it had destroyed several others before her.

Similarly, the breaking of a tie with a circle was seen as just as impossible as a mate-break and could have equally devastating impacts on the Serians here. To lose a bonded was bad enough - comparable to losing an Elder in the Clan Council.

It was through these things - the magic of binding one soul to another, the similarities between her Clan and the Circles these creatures formed - that she first came to know the magic of this place. It was through these bonds that she found her mind turning frequently to those under her care; for she was tasked with strengthening them through play and guiding them through trouble.

And the magic she had tasted was far from stable; it was wild, fierce, and as dangerous as the sea in a monsoon. It was the remnants of a long-dead war still ripping across a realm. It was what a realm was being remade from; what birthed a new land, after the last of the old fae had left.

But it was here in such a way as few places she'd seen could match. It was overwhelming, the sheer scope of the powers unleashed, the very volume of the magic that permeated all things. It was power itself. And it was life; it helped bring all the lovely creatures that had come to live upon the new realm she'd created, strengthening it so her kind could have a proper home again. It could sustain them in nearly every aspect, now, this land of hers; a few more eons and she'd have it just right, she thought.

The magics here were nothing like the ones in her home. At home, they were a part of her; here, she was allowed to become part of it.

Blinking herself back to awareness, she looked at his efforts of creating a master rune he knew and tilted her head the other way, gathering all these thoughts she'd considered. It wasn't stable; it was wild, and more powerful and present than his own symbols could harness. It was also alien - and so far, from what she'd heard, it was a fully alien presence, with no basis to begin a connection. It gave him no solid place to start; she couldn't quite decide if this would be a good or bad thing. It depended upon the student, she supposed.

Here, she said, and reached over to modify his ornate rune, You make it too sophisticated; the powers here are far from refined. Take this raw power and bend it towards a simple goal - from there, perhaps you might refine it further. Begin with fire on a stick, and from there turn it into the flame that can float above your palm. Use a rune for each transition if you need; perhaps one day you'll find how to gather it without the aid of a rune, to call upon fire itself simply by will and respect, and then refine it further with your arts.

Shrugging, she showed him the end result of her efforts - a symbol that was far from complex, merely different than he'd began with. There were more lines and less curves, and it was less uniform and symmetrical. It was, however, a simple figure all the same.

Leaning sideways, she picked up a stick, touched the tip to the rune, and watched it burst into flame.

She looked very wild herself, with her face lit from below. For a moment it seemed a hint of that liger could be seen in the depths of her eyes.